In the booklet interview, Peteris Vasks notes that during the Soviet rule in Latvia composition of sacred choral music was heavily discouraged. Personal necessity as well, it seems, also put him off writing the Pater noster his Protestant minister father kept asking for. Instrumental music was of greater importance.

When he did write a Pater noster (1991), it was in a simpler, more consonant style than much of his earlier work, expressively close to the “holy minimalism” common to a number of Baltic composers, but Vasks’s triadic style – which he feels essential for sacred music – shares little with them. A short, peaceful meditation, it is reverentially performed by the Latvian Radio Choir. So, too, is Dona nobis pacem (1996), inhabiting the same evocative sound world. Trouble is, where Pater noster says what it needs to in under seven minutes, Dona nobis pacem says half as much in more than twice the time. Despite being beautifully sung and played, I found it unmoving.

The Missa (2000, rev 2000-05) is a different matter. True, the expressive idiom is the same, but Vasks here invests his ideas in more musically satisfying forms. The use of string orchestral accompaniment reminded me in places, the Sanctus especially, of English music and sounds a touch like what I imagine an early Mass setting by Tippett might have sounded like. There are sympathetic echoes (no doubt coincidental) of Howells in the Benedictus and overlong Agnus Dei, too. Despite what the back cover states, none of the set texts is included.